formed under the Persian monarchy, in defiance of its periods of despotism.

Zoroaster was led, however submissively he began, to set his hopes high concerning the relations between the king and the Persians. More and more struck with the immense power which had been given, as he thought, by Ormuzd to a single mortal, he renewed his efforts that Ormuzd should be served with fidelity. A sort of patriarchal government rose out of doubts and longings, as a vision he had waited to behold; 53 and though the contradiction between the rule of the warrior and that of the patriarch was irreconcilable, the reformer did not quail before the proposal of royal responsibilities more imperative than any which had yet been imagined amongst the loyal and ignorant people of the Persian mountains. The king was not only exhorted, but directly instructed, to govern his subjects as Ormuzd himself would govern them, like a true father and friend. High up in heaven before the throne of the god, the prophet had beheld a burning fire. While that lasted, he related, the king would live; but when Ormuzd willed, the flame would be extinguished and the king would die. And the monarch on earth, before whom the prophet spake, must have trembled with unwonted fear, to hear his complete dependence upon the deity and the flame in heaven.

54

53For nothing imperfect," according to one of the Chaldæan oracles, attributed to Zoroaster, “circulates from a paternal principle." Cory's Ancient Fragments, p. 241.

54 See the essay of Kleuker on the Civil Life of the Persians, appended to his translation of the Zend-Avesta, Vol. I. p. 71.

The whole world of Persia was to be constituted, according to Zoroaster, after the model of the celestial kingdom which Ormuzd ruled. The Persians of the lowest classes were uplifted from their degradation; husbandmen were openly portrayed as "sources of blessings"; 55 and the relief of the indigent was exalted to the highest service which Ormuzd could receive.56 But it was more in the reform of lives, in the inculcation of the same virtues to every class, that Zoroaster elevated the condition of his inferior countrymen. Every Persian was bound to purity and to union; in purity,57 his duties to himself, in union, those to his race, would be most thoroughly accomplished. The chief of the family or the class, the quarter or the city, was to be chosen for his superiority in the qualities which the law required; while priest, noble, or warrior was nominally accountable for the exercise of the authority he obtained.58 It may be trusting too much to words, but there are many signs that Zoroaster had less hesitation in improving upon the civil than he had shown concerning the religious condition of his people. The part

55 Zend-Avesta, I. ptie. 2, p. 141. The " purest point of the law" was to "sow the earth with grain." Ibid., p. 284.

56 Zend-Avesta, 1. ptie. 2, p. 284. So" he who gives alms unites himself with him who receives." Ibid., II. p. 35.

57 The great duty of man was to keep himself pure. "The word of the pure Zoroaster but "he who purifieth his own law

was his guide;

by the holiness of his thoughts, of his words, and of his actions," was declared to "give a new purity to the pure law.” Zend-Avesta, I. ptie. 2, pp. 105, 141, 367.

58" He who is without sin shall correct him who has committed sin, and the simple Persian shall have the power to reprove even the doctor of the law." Zend-Avesta, 1. ptie. 2, p. 128.

of the religious system itself most nearly connected with the civil was that which he chiefly altered; and in the introduction of a simpler ritual in religion, he was perhaps the author of a greater degree of independence in life.

But the distinguishing feature of Zoroaster's reform is one we have not yet directly observed. It belongs to him entirely, or to the characteristics of his nation, which he alone was able to seize and act upon. Every condition of the Persians was to be fashioned according to the superior conditions or classes. The husbandman was bound, not only to sow the grain "in purity," but to imitate the courage and to follow the battles of the noble. The noble, in his turn, was encouraged to aspire after the virtue and the preeminence of the king; while the king would look upwards to the divinities of the Persian skies, if he believed in them, and strive, as he knew how, to resemble their perfections. These were the elements, at least, of universal progress. The classes, instead of being fortified by insurmountable barriers against the efforts of their own members to leave them or those of inferior men to penetrate within them, were hereditary only to the indolent or the unfortunate. No one was too humble to hope for social as well as personal improvement; and had the spirit of the reformer corresponded with the words he uttered to his countrymen, there might have been aroused an individual activity amongst the Persians, before which the Greeks might have quailed at Thermopyla or Platæa.

60

But it was not for the Persian nation to maintain its dominion. It relaxed its rigidity more than any race we have yet here known; 59 it professed a purer religion than any other people, save only one, of all antiquity; but the wars which had been the means of its rise were the appointed instruments of its downfall. The prayer of Zoroaster for immortality, that he might establish the practice of his laws throughout all ages, was vain. His visions of patriarchal benevolence in the monarchy, on whose fate that of the nation and that of the empire both depended, were dissipated by his own exhortations to combat and fanatical wrath against all disbelievers; 61 and the separation at which he connived, in religion and in government, of the Persians from their subjects, was as ruinous to them as to those they oppressed and scorned. Real unity of law or liberty was impossible amongst a multitude of races bound to different associations and different institutions: it was not even conceivable to the reformer, or to the monarch, or to their posterity.

In the first glow, indeed, of dominion, the Persians were inspired with a vigor which was irresistible while it endured; but when their morning chant had been sung upon their battle-grounds, the day grew weary

59 As in Herodotus (I. 135) we read that the Persians were ready to adopt the customs of other nations.

60 Anquetil, Vie de Zoroastre. 61 It ought to be mentioned, perhaps, that there are also various

stories of Zoroaster's intercourse with the Brahmins, the Jewish doctors, and even with Pythagoras. See De Guigniaut's notes to Creuzer's Religions, etc., Tom. I. pp. 689, 690.

to them, and they lost the enthusiasm and the dignity which had distinguished them under their early monarchs. The nobles, ready to imitate the kings of later reigns, forsook their manlier habits for effeminacy and incapability; while the people, indebted to the lucky accident of a merciful sovereign for any freedom they could enjoy, decreased in numbers, forgetting their loyalty and their pride. But it was at the court of the king or in the palaces of the satraps that the decline was most apparent and most foreboding; and in laboring through the tedious history of Persian despotism, it is really difficult to remember its better days and better offices that were yet so soon exhausted. The truth remains, that a government to be free, or a religion to be pure, must be fortified and consecrated by other means than exclusiveness or warfare.

The empire of Persia was a trial of wider principles of government and of broader bands of union among men than had before been brought into action. Had it been more successful, the utmost liberty consistent with its character would have been greatly imperfect; but as it happened, the freedom confined to the conquerors alone was lost by them at length under a ruthless despotism. Yet the trial brought its advantages. At the time the East was reduced beneath a single government, the West was exalting itself with the liberty its people had more fortunately obtained. To them were opened the stores of elder days; and though at first they stood confounded, they soon began to claim their shares, .